One thing that really gets me about Sephiroth's obsession with his mother is that it had to have been instilled in him by Gast and Hojo. Assuming he was raised by the company and in Gast's care until the guy ran off, after which he was shuffled off into Hojo's custody (all of which is either overtly canon or heavily implied enough to be considered canon), it wouldn't have been particularly difficult for to pull him away from the whole concept.
Children are dangerously impressionable for the first several years of their lives, it's indescribably easy to condition them into seeing things as normal—this is why a lot of abused children don't talk about anything being wrong, because that's their normal. It would have been very little work to indicate to Sephiroth starting very young that his mother died when he was born, but it's fine because that's not uncommon and he doesn't need to worry about it.
But Gast (and Hojo) didn't do that. Gast at the very least ingrained this concept into his head that his mother was special; he'd have been the one who told Sephiroth her name, who told him anything about her, because he had him at his youngest and he was the one who was so obsessed with the Cetra. One of them even gave him a photo of her* so that he'd know what she looked like, even if the woman in that photo wasn't Jenova.
They nurtured that longing for a loving parent, something that would only have been worth the effort to instill if being used as a form of manipulation. They knew his mother, she was involved with the company, the only way he'd ever know anything would be if he stayed and listened and did as he was told. The longer he stayed, the more he'd understand, and the more likely it would be that he'd find out about her. They made sure that he knew the only way to ever get any information on the one person who might have loved him unconditionally, who wouldn't have abandoned him or abused him if she'd had a choice, was to be loyal and obedient.
They led him along with the prospect, the hope that someone out there might have loved him for himself instead of for what he could do. Someone out there might have loved him for who he was, not what he could become.
They absolutely must have done this intentionally. Gast started it, Hojo continued it, and Lucrecia never had a chance to intervene. Gast may not have had ulterior motives in the malicious sense, as he believed that Sephiroth was the son of a Cetra—but he never told Sephiroth that, did he? Because Sephiroth was shocked by the discovery in Nibelheim, he didn't know until then that he was, allegedly, the last of the Ancients. Gast never told him.
But he told him his mother's name was Jenova, he told him he was special, he was kind and supportive through Sephiroth's most formative years. We know that because of how he behaves as a young teenager, the values and patterns of behavior that were instilled in him prior to being surrendered to Hojo's abuse in the name of progress. We know that because of how he talks about Gast, and how he compares to Hojo.
Gast and Hojo gave Sephiroth the concept of "mother" as someone that was good and kind and would love him no matter what, and turned it into a leash that bound him to Shinra for life.
*The photo was given to Sephiroth by Hojo, as a note. Based on FSBR and DoC, Lucrecia was still with the company until around 1984, when Gast left; she was on Project 0 then, not the Jenova Project, and there didn't seem to be any overlap since Hojo also didn't appear to have access to Sephiroth until he got control of the department, but it still would have been a very risky thing for Gast to do. Hojo seemingly got custody of Sephiroth around the same time that Lucrecia ran off into the mountains, which was also around the same time that Gast went AWOL, so Hojo may very well have given the photo to Sephiroth in an attempt to ingratiate himself to the boy during the transition in custody.
It makes more sense that Hojo would have the photo than Gast, anyway—Lucrecia was and is Hojo's wife. Of course he has a photo of his wife. Of course he held onto it all this time. Of course he gave it to the only part of her he had left, the great work they created together. Sephiroth was her project too.
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